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61sT Congress, ) SENATE. J Document 

M Session. \ 1 No. 518. 



SPEECH OF SENATOR CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 



Mr. Bradley i)re!iented the followinj^ 

SPEECH OF SENATOR CHAUNCEY M. DEPEWATTHE NINETEENTH 
ANNUAL DINNER GIVEN BY THE MONTAUK CLUB, OF BROOKLYN, 
IN CELEBRATION OF HIS BIRTHDAY. ON APRIL 23, 1910. 



May 2, 1910.— Ordered to be printed. 



Mr. President AND Gentlemen: 

No hiiiouage can express fittingly my pleasure at the renewal of your 
greeting-. For nearly two decades you have gathered annually in honor 
of my birthday. Members of all political parties, and all religious 
faiths, men in the professions, in Inisiness, in journalism, in literature, 
in the multifarious activities and antagonisms of American life, lay 
their ditferences aside for this festive night, as the}^ have done during 
all these years. This holding in abeyance and suspension the antago- 
nisms which divide men upon many lines is only ordinarily ]7ossible at 
a funeril. Even in that case, some go as far as did the late Judge 
Hoar, who detested Wendell Phillips, and when reipiested by the familv 
to be a pallbearer, sent back word declining, but with the remark, 
•"I approve of the proceedings."" It is a refutation of the universal "^ 
charge against us that we are so absoi'bed in materialism that we have 
lost all faculty for the healthy enjoyment of association and that attri- 
tion of minds without rancor which promotes truth and longevity, for 
to-night, whatever we were ^^esterday or will be to-morrow, is devoted 
whole-heartedly and unselfishly to comradeship and good-fellowship. 

At ?♦) the world ought to seem no ditierent on its spiritual, its eth- 
ical, and its human side than it did at 46. A statesman and jiolitician 
\N ho had won many distinctions and l)een l)lessed with a undtitude of 
devoted followers closed his career and his life with the i)athetic 
inquiry, '* What does it all amount io'." If I shouldattemi)t to estimate 
what the world had all amounted to for me from the day I entered 
Peekskill Academy at lt> years of age until this hour, volumes would 
not suffice, and, therefore, I sum it all up in this, ''For a long life. 
al)ounding in good things, in a capacity for enjoying everything, in 
reciprocal attachments and contributions with multitudes of men and 
women, in moi-e than my share of health and of happines-^. I leverently 
thank (iod both that I am alive and that 1 have lived." 

I read an account the other day of a Russian, named Ivan Ivusman, 
who was admitted to the hospital in St. Peteisburg at the age of 13S. 



2 '^ SPEECH OF SENATOR CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. 

He remembered Napoleon's burning of Moscow, and the few incidents 
that occur in the career of a Russian peasant. He was an aoricultural 
laborer for a mere pittance during this whole period, and could neither 
read nor write. That is not an experience to be envied. It enforces 
Tennesson's lines, *' Better fifty years of P^urope than a cycle of Cathay.*' 
But, on the contrary, when you think of Auber composing his best 
operas at 89. and Manual Garcia still an instructor in vocal culture at 
100, and Whittier singing immortal songs at 85, 3'ou are in contact 
with men who have lived and who know "what it all amounts to."' 

There is an eastern maxim that every man at 40 is either a fool or 
a physician. It is eminently true. That old Italian, Carnaro, who 
found all of his associates in Venice dying at -to, made up his mind 
that these tragedies were due to excesses. He had the strength of 
will to adopt a very severe but frugal regimen, Ijoth in eating and 
drinking. At 80 he pul^lished his experiences for the benefit of those 
who were still dying or likely to die at 40. At 90 and at 100 he repeated 
the publication and enforced the lesson of the happiness wdiich had 
come to him with health and longevity, declaring the same might be 
shared by every man. His plan was very simple. He selected out of 
the many things he liked a few for his table, masticated thoroughly, 
long before Fletcherism was known, and limited the quantity 63^ 
measurement upon the scales to half what he had usually devoured, 
reduced his wine to the minimum, and at that time tobacco had not 
been discovered. 

Fifty -four years in public and semipublic life and upon the platform 
all over this country and in Europe for all sorts of objects in every 
department of human interest have given me a larger acquaintance 
than almost anybody living. The sum of observation and experience 
growing out of this opportunity is that granted normal conditions, no 
hereditary troubles, and barring accidents and plagues, the man who 
dies before seventy conuuits suicide. Mourning the loss of friends 
has led me to study the causes of their earlier departure. It could 
invarial)ly be traced to intemperance in the broadest sense of that 
word; intemperance in eating, in drinking, in the gratification of 
desires, in work and in irregularity of hours, crowning it all with 
unnecessary worry. Pythagoras said "Bew^are of ballots if you wish 
to live long.'' In other words, the old philosopher advised keeping out 
of politics. In his time the defeated party ran the risk of death, or 
imprisonment, or exile, and so the advice was good, •' Beware of bal- 
lots." But, in our country wdiere the citizen is a sovereign and 
responsible for the government of his country, his state, his city, his 
village or his town, an active interest in public afiairs and party man- 
agement gives healthy circulation to the blood, healthy exercise and 
activity to the muscles, and inspiration and enlargement to the mind, 
and satisfaction in results which all tend to length of years and use- 
fulness. 

The year of my birth, 1834, seems a long way ofi' on the calendar 
but mighty short in the retrospect. The Roman Emperor Hadrian 
spent the revenue* of an empire ui)on astrologers who should fore- 
cast his future from the conjunction of the stars at his birth. If you 
are so inclined, you can have that work done now for 50 cents. But, 
suppose we leave the stars to the astronomer and conie down to earth. 
In 1834 Cardinal (Til)bons, Doctor Eliot of Harvard, President Benja- 
min Harrison, Justice Harlan of the Supreme Court, Colonel Robert 

iVIAY lie- !9lO ■ 



SPEECH OF SENATOR CHAUNCEY M. DEl'KW. 3 

G. IngersoU, iind F.dinund Clarence Stedmsm. the poet, also fell under 
the influence of the powers of Heaven and earth which started them 
on their careers. Every year has its distinction, but this one seems 
to have hrou^-ht forth more than most others of thethinos which have 
influenced the world. In it were oroanized the first National Tem- 
perance Association and the first National Anti-Slavery Society. 

The idea of tiMuperance at that time was purely voluntary. Statu- 
tory restrictions had not been dreamed of. At that time and for 
twenty years afterward drunkenness was our national vice. At a large 
dinner like this a considerable portion of the ouests would always be 
hopelessly oone. and at private dinners of fourteen, sixteen, or twenty 
it was common for several of the fj^uests to' be disf^racefully drunk. 
This never occurs now. either at pul)Iic or private entertainments, no 
matter how free the wine. 

The i)urport of the antislavery movement was perfectly understood 
bv the slaveholders and their sympathizers. .Meetinf^s in New York 
and in Philadelphia were broken uj) by riots which sometimes lasted for 
days and in which many were injured and large amounts of piopeity 
destroyed. In Connecticut a mob with a brass band interrupted a 
lecturer for the al)olition of slavery and drove him out of Norwich 
to the tune of '^The Rogues' March"." The legislatures of the South- 
ern States called upon the Northern States to prohibit the printing of 
antislavery publications and did prohibit their circulation in their Com- 
monwealtiis. President Jackson sent a message to Congress recom- 
mending the passage of an act for the suppression of antislavery lit- 
erature. 

The agitation l)egun by the formation of the National Anti-Slavery 
Society m 18134 continued with increasing volume and vehemence. 
The society preaciied the horrors of slavery and then on the patriotic 
side a sentiment that the Declaration of Independence should be true 
in spirit as well as in letter. After thirty years, at the cost of a mil- 
lion lives, and directly and indirectly of ten thousand millions of dol- 
lars, and up to date three thousand 'millions in pensions, slavery was 
abolished and the Dixdaration of Independence made true in our 
Country, both in letter and in spirit. 

In that year occurred the first record of a beat in journalism which 
has become the life of the press. The Journal of Connncrce estab- 
lished relays of horses between New York and Phihidelphia and 
secured the news of the White House and of Congress a day earlier 
than the other New York papers. 

There was great intellectual activity in the country resulting in 
breaking away from the old universities. A liberal education was 
thought imp()ssil)le except at Yale, or Harvard, or Columbia, or 
Princeton, l)ut in that year there were twelve colleges founded in dif- 
ferent parts of the country, all of which are now successful and have 
done magnificent work in higher education. 

Andrew Jackson was President of the United States and William L. 
Marcv governor of the State of New York. The President gave his 
approval to the party platform. ''That political workers are to be 
rewarded with political offices, and political parties are to be held 
together bv the cohesive power of public plunder." That doctrine 
controlled the civil service of the United States without check or hin- 
drance for over fifty years. In that year the United States national 
debt was i)aid of!' ancrthe country started with a clean slate. In that 



4 SPEECH OF SENATOR CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. 

year General Jackson gave his famous order for the removal of gov- 
ernment deposits from the banks. This was the beginning of an agi- 
tation which threw our financial system into cliaos. It made impos- 
sible currency upon a scientific basis, and was the fruitful mother of 
the countr3^-wide and disastrous panics which have so often shaken 
our financial and industrial stability. The most delicate, difiicult, and 
dangerous of all the functions of government, the one upon whose 
proper creation and administration rests the whole fabric of national 
and individual credit, the one which should be adjusted and settled by 
the lessons of the experience of highly organized governments for 
hundreds of 3'ears, has from that time to this been the sport of party 
warfare, political passion, and partisanship. The dead hand of that 
great, strong man still holds our financial system by the throat. 

Our institutions and political policy came from England and were 
so modified by our ancestors as to meet conditions under a republican 
form of government and the expansive necessities of the new country. 
All power in the mother land was originally in the thrond. By suc- 
ceeding revolutions the people gained more and more power until now 
the}^ have it all, and in many respects Great Britain in its government 
is the most democratic of all countries. On the other hantl, we began 
with a distrust of executive power and authority and our evolution 
has been the other way. Our first confederacy was a rope of sand. 
In our government under the Constitution we protected ourselves 
against the executive by a clear definition of his powers, by the right 
to override his veto by Congress, by the veto upon him from the 
Supreme Court, and the power of impeachment. Our early Presidents 
who had taken part in the formation of the government were in 
thorough harmony with these limitations upon the President, and with 
the apprehension of kingly autnority which had brought them about. 
With Jackson a new generation came into the government, a genera- 
tion removed from the experiences and opinions of the revolution. 
The leader of this generation was one of the strongest, most self- 
centered, autocratic and arl)itrary of men who have ever appeared in our 
public life. He not only defied Congress and the courts, but won the 
applause of the people and changed public opinion as to the powers 
and duties of the President. From his time untij now there has been 
not only in the Central Government, but in the States, a growing dis- 
trust of the representatives of the people in Congress and in the legis- 
latures and an increasing confidence in Presidents and governors. The 
literature of our magazines and of a large portion of the press casts 
doubt upon and arouses suspicion of the actions and the methods of 
successive Congresses and legislatures and appeals to the President or 
the governors to control and lead them. The writers put their faith 
in the executive and justify everything that he may do on the ground 
that the only safety of the people is in the strength, integrity, and 
courage of the executive against their betrayal by their representatives. 

And yet, any competent man who will conscientiously and impartial!}' 
study the question nmst come to the conclusion that the conditions of 
our JNational Congress are to-day infinitely better than ever before. 
There is no lo})b3^ at Washington. There are no interests there seeking 
to influence Senators and Members. For the times in which we live, 
for the varied necessities of our Government, for the legislation so 
much more difiicult than it was in earlier da3's, both Houses of Con- 
gress, in ability and patriotism, will stand favorable comparison with 



SPEECH OF SENATOR CHAirNCEY M. DEPKW. 5 

what are called the g-roat days of Wet>ster, Clay, and Calhoun, ^\'ith 
Grant bet>an the sy-steiii of not only reeonmiending legislation to Con- 
gress hut transmitting hills prepared to carry that legislation into 
effect, and this h}- evolution has become the common practice. 

In 1834 Abraham Lincoln was elected to the legislature of Illinois 
and began his extraordinary pul)lic career. 

In 1(S34 Chicago received one mail a week, carried on horseback 
from Miles, Mich., and in 1834 the Whig party was formed out of the 
disruption of the old Federal organization and DiMuocrats who were 
auti-slaver}' and l)elieved in a liberal construction of the Constitution. 

We can go l)ack to this period for the beginning of the extraordi- 
nary change which has taken place in our business methods and social 
life. A railroad was built from -Jerse}' City to New Brunswick and 
projected on to Trenton. A start was made on the P^rie Koad. The 
Ilarlem, which extended through the fields from the present site of 
the city hall in New York to the end of Ahuihattan Island, crossed the 
Harlem River. In other words, from small l)eginnings of a few miles 
for local trartic the expansion which began in lSo4 has in seventy -six 
)'ears co\ ered the country with 2;:34.0*tO miles of railway mileage and 
developed new territories with a speed unknown in tlu^ liistory of im- 
migration and settlement. It has transformed our land from isolated 
conununities in which individual initiative and enterprise supplied 
nearly all the manufactures wdiich they required into great centers of 
industries where mills and factories with enormous capital can, because 
of cheap transportation, get their raw material from great distances 
and give universal distribution to the manufactured pioduct and place 
their output upon the market at a cost so low as to make competition 
by the individual impossible. More and more the United States be- 
cause of cheaper cost is bi-inglng into every department of human 
industry" greater capital and larger employment. It has produced, on 
the one hand, the gigantic corporation, and on the other, in self-de- 
fense, the labor unions. 

The problems growing out of this development are the ones which 
this generation faces and of which the preceding ones were ignorant. 
There can be no reasonal)le doul)t that the proper method of dealing 
with these great questions is not by government ownei^hip but gov- 
ernment control. Corporations are to grow larger and combinations 
stronger. It is the inevitalile tendency of the times. The safety of 
the people is to be in having the hand of the government, through 
responsible commissions and courts, upon every process of organiza- 
tion and o[)eration. in frequent reports and publicity, in the press 
constantly informing the people and in the President and Congress, 
governors and the legislatures, being in constant and enlightened 
touch with the situation. It is thus that we can promote l)enelicent 
expansion, give opportunit}' for indi\idual initiative and })revent 
monopolistic control. 

Just now there is both suti'ering and alarm because of iiigh prices. 
I have not much sympathy with those who say that this condition is 
due to national extravagance. There was tremendous complaint of 
high prices in 1835. There is on rile in th(» Treasury Department a 
copybook of the expenses of a clerk who wanted an increase of salary 
because of the unusually high cost of living. His family consisted of 
five persons and his food for the year cost him S33S.1(>. The Bureau 
of Labor of the Govenuuent estimated last vear that the food for a 



6 SPEECH OF SENATOR CHAUNCEY M. BEFEW. 

similar t'amil\- now would be $312.92. This clerk sa3^s that his boots 
cost him >^3.T5. his cotton sheeting l<i cents a 3'ard (both now are 
about the same), his lamp oil ^61 a gallon (now 10 cents), blacking of 
shoes 25 cents a shine (now o cents), flour S8 a barrel (now §7), trans- 
portation for himself and wife from Washington to Martinsburg. Va., 
and return §32.<»3 (now i?S.02), Martinsburg being 77 miles from 
Washington: an ordinary" cooking stove ^d (now about ^16.50), and 
a lirkin of butter $10.22 (now about $21.50). Extravagance is a 
relative, not a positive, condition. Nobody would live now as the 
whole country" did in 1834 and 1835. Both men and women of that 
period were largely the manufacturers of their own clothes in their 
own houses. The}' cultivated their own little gardens without help. 
If they kept a horse, as manv of them did, the care of the animal, the 
mending of the harness and the painting and repairing of the wagon 
were all done by the head of the family. The wife made the children's 
clothes, and ran the house and a kindergarten. 

The laborer who comes here f roni abroad and continues, as he will for 
a time, to live as he did at home finds that upon our wages he is saving 
money rapidl}^ and accumulating, according to his ideas, a comforta- 
ble fortune. In fact, many, retaining their habits of living which 
they brought with them, go back in a few j^ears to lives of ease on 
little places upon the Continent. That sort of thing is carrying out 
of the United States a hundred million of dollars a year. l»ut those 
who remain to become citizens, and those who are born here and are 
citizens, desii'e to live as an American artisan should and will live, in 
housing, clothing, food, educational opportunities for the children, and 
surplus for travels, books, and pleasure, which make the glory of 
American citizenship. By our system of protection we have made it 
possible for the American workingman to receive wages in many cases 
double and in all cases much larger than in other countries. But we 
have not as yet protected him against competition b}' immigrants who 
will work for what he can not aflord to work for and live as he will not 
and should not be asked to do. 

The most beneticent of the changes which have occurred during my 
time have been the laws granting rights to women. In my earlier 
daj's a woman's property was her husband's, his debts were hers, and 
it was not until 181:8 that she could have her independent, possessions 
or safety in any business she might undertake. It was still later that 
she was accorded the privilege of a higher education and her intel- 
lectual necessities as well as ability considered to be fidly equal to 
man's. As I used to travel through the country on railway-inspection 
trips I noticed at every station a crowd of idlers. They knew the 
names of the trains, of the conductors, and the engineers, and were eager 
to tell the waiting traveler whether No. 2 was late or the Empire State 
Express on time. I noticed that they disappeared at noon and at about 
6. Upon inquiry I found that they were supported by their wives. 
These capable, hard-working, energetic women were dressmakers or 
milliners or kept little stores, and their worthless husbands hung 
around the depot because they had no other means of passing away 
time unless the circus was in town or elections in progress, and turned 
up invariabh' for meals which had been earned by the wife. This 
experience has done mor*^ than all things else to bring me toward 
woman suttrage, for in all these cases she is assuredlv the better half. 



SPEECH OF rfENATOK rilArXCKV M. UEI'EW. 7 

i'eoplt' are all intiui'iu-cd lar^vly l>y their point of view rather than tlie 
merits of the question. When Captain Sehinittheroer in New York 
arrested a sleei)\vaikei-, tlie man said, "Hold on: you must not arrest 
me. I am a somnambulist." '4 don't care a cuss what your relijrion 
is," said the Ca|)tain; "you can't walk the >treet in my pn-cinct in 
your niiihtshirt." 

Anyone who has had tUo opportunity to watch closely foi' half a 
century the psycholoijical de\elopment of people linds many interest- 
injr residts. The vast majority are neijihborly, t.-enerous, sympathetic, 
and kindly. In the evolution of inlluenccs the other soit sometimes 
take the lead. The man who intpiires at>out your health with a sug- 
gestion that you are in a decline, who sympathetically wants to know 
why your wife or daughter or son was not at church last Sunday, with 
an intimation that he considers his or her condition rather serious, 
wiio hastens to drop everything to convey to you some bad news, is 
common in every conununit}'. If some provincial journal which you 
are never likely to see has a Uiean article about you this candid friend 
buys two copies, puts them in sealed envelopes, with 2-cent stamps 
attachetl so that you will be sure to open tht'Ui, and mails one to your 
wife and one to yourself. I wonder what this person, who fears or is 
ashamed to give his name or adtlress, gets in return for this invest- 
ment ot" 4 cents. He ma}' gloat over imaginary sutiering as worth 
that expenditure. Init can never be sure that his bolt hits the mark. 
He is a blind speculator in malice and meanness. 

Coming from a long railway journey I landed in the Grand Central 
Depot one morning between 4 and .5 o'clock. A man stepped up to me 
and said in regard to a very dear and valued friend: " Have you heard 
about JiniT' I said, "No. What^' He hit me a whack in the back 
that sent me otf the })latform onto the rails and shouted, "He is dead. 
My God! he is dead.'' When I recovered sulKciently, J said, ''How 
came you to be here at this early hour!"' The answer was, ''The family 
sent me to meet you and break the news gentl}-." 

There is a singular prevalence, temporary I am sure, of this senti- 
ment just now. A well-known writer, whose contributions are very 
acceptable to the magazines, told me that he thought there had been 
quite enough of misrepresentation and unfair ci'iticism of President 
Taft and his administration, and so he wrote some articles stating the 
conclusions which he had arrived at, and the reasons for them, which 
were favoral)le to the President. His employers, the pu])lishers. said, 
"Our readers don't want that. If you have any scandal about any 
public man or about Congress with enough truth to make it, when 
properly presented, seem to be very bad and, therefore, sensational, 
that suits our readers and increases our circulation." 

I heard a story from a journalistic friend, who publishes a ])road and 
liberal pajjcr. that the proprietor of one of the newspapers who makes 
this view of uunisui'es and men a .-pecialty, ha\ing been absent for 
some time, turned up in the editorial rooms and called the stati' about 
him and wanted to know if they had l;een otf on a vacation. " Why f 
said the astonislunl manager and editor. " Because." said the bos-;. "I 
have not seen anything which flays or dissects anyl)ody for a week." 
" But," said the manager, " no one of any account has said or done 
anything for a week." "• Well," said the boss, " we have got to keep 
u]) our reputation or lose our circulation. Take the hide ott' Bishop 
Potter." 



8 SPEECH OF SENATOR CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. 

The boys of my period were inspired as no other generation has 
been by books by the Waverley novels. If the ground was suscepti- 
ble, they created statesmen, soldiers, and poets, and aroused ambitions 
in receptive minds to be followed by the best efforts of which they 
were capable. It was a liberal education to read Dickens's novels as 
they came out one after another; the enjoyment in the last and the 
eager expectancy of the next were sensations never forgotten. Dick- 
ens's intimate picture of the life of the ordinary home, its joys, its sor- 
rows, its comedies a^id tragedies, touched every heart and broadened 
every mind. So, when Thackeray's novels V)egan to appear, their 
exquisite literature, their superb English, their masterly dissection of 
human motives and springs of action gave exquisite pleasure and cre- 
ated a generation of brilliant thinkers and great writers. 

Two years ago, while in Europe, I was at one of the big hotels 
at a w^atering place on the Continent. The table of the reading 
room w^as strewn with cheap editions which the visitors had read and 
left behind. I never dreamed that so much eroticism, nastiness, and 
brutal depravity could be printed and sold by reputable booksellers. 
But a popular writer told me that the publishers claimed this was the 
public taste and it demanded novels whose basic action should be 
domestic infelicities brought about by faithless wives and husbands 
and immoral adventuresses, and that no detail should l)e omitted which 
would give spice to the narrative. This sort of thing can be done in 
a French novel so as to seem a work of art, but in English it becomes 
the quintessence of badness and vulgarity. In the course of a half 
century 1 have noticed these cycles. It is difficult to decide whether 
they are protests against Puritanism or a certain and sudden eagerness 
to show that contact with the worst is not injurious. Happily, this 
deluge of tilth did not sweep over our country, and the reaction in 
Europe is leading to happy results. Serious books by eminent men 
upon live topics and with lofty ends are becoming popular, and the 
wings of genius, scoured of mud, are working to lift the novel, which 
is the companion and preacher of our daily life, into the air which was 
breathed by Walter Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, and Kingsley. 

Unhappy is the man who is not so much dissatisfied with what he 
has as with what the other fellow^ possesses. Happy is the man who, 
looking over his life, its associations, its incidents and accidents, its 
friendships and its enmities, would not exchange with anyone, living 
or dead. A successful politii-ian who incurred a great deal of abuse 
used to comfort himself by saying of his critic, ''That man will die 
and go to hell." He always calne into my office immediately after one 
of his enemies had departed and would simply remark, ''He is 
there." The result of this gentleman's view of those who disagreed 
with him led to a general exclamation when he died himself, " Well, 
he is there." 

Galileo, being one day in the cathedral at Pisa, watched the oscilla- 
tions of a lamp suspended from the ceiling. He observed that the 
vibrations were performed in equal time, and from that he invented 
the clock and the machinery whose accuracy created modern astron- 
omy. But people had been watching the swinging of that lamp for 
hundreds of vears and saw nothing in it. Its lesson came to Galileo 
because he was the most eminent of the trained scientists of his time. 
James Hargreaves lived by spinning and weaving, his wife and chil- 
dren helping him. He was always experimenting and all his experi- 



SPEECH OF SENATOR CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. y 

luents were failures. One dii}' the youngest nieniber of the fiiniily, 
toddlin(( over the Hoor, fell against the spinning wheel while it was 
working and upset it. Ilargreaves noticed that while he i-etaincd the 
thread in his hand the wheel continued to revolve horizontally for a 
time, giving a vertical rotation to the spindle. That suggested the 
spinning jenny, which, l)y giving Kngland the conunand for so long a 
time of the cotton industry, made her one of the greatest manufac 
turing countries in the world. The lazy man says, ''What a lucky 
accident,"' but liai'greaves had been trying for twenty years to dis- 
cover this secret. Hundreds of weaving machines had been upset in 
the meantime, but it was the traiidng, experience, and genius of the 
observer which brought about this result. Charles Goodyear spent 
the best part of his life trying to produce vulcanized India rubber. 
Angry at his failures, he Hung a piece of rubl)er upon a hot stove, to 
tind afterwards that the problem was solved. Rubber had been burned 
in one form or another ever since it was discovered, but it was the 
mind intent for so long upon the one purpose which saw in the acci- 
dent the realization of his hopes. 80, my friends, the longer we live 
the more lirmly we are convinced that it is only training and work 
which win. A people have recently been discovered in one of the 
islands in the Bay of Bengal wdio wear no clothes, for in that climate 
they need none, who do not have to work for food because it grows 
in superabundance upon the trees, while a little exertion gathers fish 
from the stream or game from the forest. Under these conditions of 
absolute indolence and no necessity for exertion their average age is 
twenty-six years, while the hardy peasants of the Balkan Mountains, 
who with the greatest difficulty can scratch enough for existence out 
of the inhospitable soil, are the longest lived races in the world. 

It is a glorious thing for any people to have thrills of enthusiasm. 
I think all of us, no matter wliat our views of him raa}' be, no matter 
how much w^e ditier with him in opinion, no matter how nuich he may 
have antagonized some of us by his actions, feel prouder of the prod- 
uct of American liberty and opportunity because the eye of the world 
is just now tilled, to the exclusion of all other men, by the virile figure 
of Theodore Roosevelt. 

In closing this seventy-sixth anniversary there rises out of the past 
this fact of hope and aspiration. During all my earlier yeai's I sat 
under the preaching of a learned preacher of the old school Presbyte- 
rian Church. Ilis most fervid sermons were on Christmas and Easter. 
He claimed that there was no historical authorit}- for these dates, and 
denounced them, to use his own language, as ''Popish superstitious." 
Liberalism or modernism, or rather Christian charity, has softened 
the antagonisms and lowered the barriers between churches and creeds. 
In these (hiys of Christian unity in faith with libeity in forms, around 
every altar on Christmas are evergreens and on Easter iiowers. The 
question of dates })ecomes insigniHcant compared with the tremendous 
consecjuences to humanity from the Birth and Resurrection, and all 
can now unite in a common celebration of these festivals. It is a long 
step toward the peace of the world, the Fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man. 

o 

S. Doc. 518, t)l-2 2 



